The fact that I actually am going to be working in Shanghai, China has become very real. Now that the entire staff has returned, it is down to business and I am feeling a familiar, overwhelming sense of ‘I have little to no idea about what is going on’. The band program at SCIS seems super awesome, but it is so different than I am used to. SO DIFFERENT!! I think it will be great, but I am a little stressed because I just do not quite understand it. I should be starting a marching band show right now, and that should be all I have to worry about! Obviously, without a football team, there will be no marching band show. I would really like to do something along those lines here to introduce them to something new, but we really don’t have any space for that. They do parade marching mostly, and so I will have to be creative. Pretty steep requirement for someone who has a career in music. Becoming overwhelmed about not knowing what the new job will look like has made me a little homesick, but I knew that these feelings would occur. So far life has been crazy busy with mostly social events, and so now the work that I came here to do begins. I am so excited/terrified.

I will add my adventure from the tour that Angela described in her latest post. We were supposed to complete different tasks such as taking a picture at a certain place, to allow us to tour the city, but it was really, really hot. My team decided our time would be better spent taking a scenic drive through the Bund, and going straight to Shanghai brewery for the rest of the time. I was definitely in the right group.